mixing colors, breaking glass
by livvylovesyou
Summary: Her life is a collage of spilled drinks and broken glasses, and she sits alone in the midst of the wreckage, waiting for someone to help her pick up the pieces. Jade-centric. Songfic to "Cynical Skin".


_**mixing colors, breaking glass**_

**Totally AU and OOC. This is like a songfic on steroids. It's really long, so it's like a bunch of stories inspired off of song lyrics, which are included. I'm giving all the characters on Victorious issues, and writing this in the Jade-centric, set in the future. **

**Pairings: Minor Jandre, Bade, Jori, and Cade. **

**Rating: M for everything you could possibly rate M for. Except lemons. No sexy sex here. Sorry. **

**Warnings: Drug use, child abuse, partying, self harm, depression, pregnancy and abortion, heavy drinking and alcoholism, mentions of suicide, mild sex scenes, femslash, eating disorders, mental illness, death, strong language. **

**Disclaimer: Victorious belongs to Nickelodeon, and "Cynical Skin" belongs to Get Scared.**

**If you're gonna flame me for being out of character, just go away.**

* * *

><p><em>Talk candy in my ear. Come on, come on. I want your toxic, talk sick baby. I know those gospel lips can change me.<em>

One of Jade's earliest memories is of a sharp slap across her temple. She might have been four or something. Who knows? Who cares. She knows no one liked her enough to document any part of her childhood.

The slaps originally were only dealt out when Jade was bad. But as she grew older, something changed, and her cries of pain became something of a drug for her father. And by the time she was ten, it was happening every day.

Her mother begged for him to stop it. Her mother loved her, her mother wanted to protect her. Her mother would sometimes hit him after he was finished with Jade, which made him angry but allowed Jade to escape. Jade's mother told him that she would leave, and take Jade with her, if he ever did that again. And Jade believed she would have. Her mother was always so strong-willed, so loving, so determined…

Which is why it hurt so much to find out that she had gone.

Jade would spend many nights in the future staring at the ceiling and just wondering why she would have done something like that. And many nights in the future after that wondering if the reason she acts the way she does (for according to Daddy, Jade is always bad) is because of her mom just leaving her. And many more after those feelings passed wondering if her mother is actually to blame. It is about the same time that Jade first learns about domestic violence.

The hatred she feels towards her father at that moment, at the tender age of thirteen, has never yet been rivaled in her life.

She holds her poker face for five more years, though, covering bruises with makeup and learning what days were the worst, when not to go home. She finds ways to taunt him, to almost provoke him. She gets a boyfriend he doesn't like. Pierces her face. Dyes her hair. Goes to a performing arts school. That really pisses him off. And deals with his brutality until July nineteenth, when everything changes.

Jade turns eighteen.

* * *

><p>The only birthday present she receives from her father is a slap across the face.<p>

"Do you know what day it is, Dad?" she asks when she comes downstairs that morning. He's obviously drunk and collapsed in his easy chair in last night's clothes, shirt unbuttoned and tie hanging lax around his neck. Jade has no idea how he can be so professional all the time, and still act like such a slob at home.

"Get me a beer." he slurs, not looking at her.

"Do you know what day it is." she repeats, sternly.

"No. For God's sake, just get me a fucking drink." There's a dangerous look in his eye.

"It's my birthday." Jade finally says, looking down at the carpet. She knew he wouldn't remember.

The slap comes seconds later, and she's almost knocked to the ground. Her mouth fills with blood from accidently biting her tongue, and her eyes fill reflexively with tears. It takes a moment for her to register the shock. Her face is on fire.

"Happy fucking birthday. Get me a beer."

She straightens up and limps to the door, and she can hear him start to follow. "No." The red burn across Jade's cheek dulls to a mild sting, and she lets out the growl she's been holding in since she could talk. After all, why not? She's eighteen now. It's not like she's tied up here in her father's sad house. So the bastard would probably die without her. So what?

"If I hear one more word from you-" her father says, hand poised to strike again. Jade's hand flies to the knob behind her, and she whips the door open. The flash of bright daylight hits his intoxicated eyes like a truck, and he stumbles backward, enough so she can safely turn and walk out.

"Fuck you." Jade spits, stepping over the threshold for the last time. "Fuck you and your fucking issues." And before slamming the door in his face, she shouts out once more. "And don't try calling anywhere, because I'm not coming back. Asshole."

She goes to Beck's.

* * *

><p><em>Look to the right of me, okay? We got Exhibit A; she, she ain't okay today.<em>

Beck Oliver. Beck, Beck, Beck. Becky. Beckett. Seems like her past, present and future.

When she arrives at his house damp from the wet morning air and still shaking with pent-up rage, he ushers her inside, pressing his lips to the side of her head and offering soothing words of protection. He's known her for long enough that he can calm her down when she's like this.

Four years they've been dating? Sounds about right.

They've always known they weren't going to college. Beck already has a job at the auto shop downtown, and Jade just doesn't want to. So when the fall rolls around and Jade's still there, they just make a combined decision to become drifters. The RV bounces between trailer parks in the LA area, never staying long enough to put down roots.

Though Jade misses the feeling of home, she has to admit, she likes the feeling of living with someone she actually likes, for once.

* * *

><p>She didn't think they would last long living together, but almost two years pass. Their relationship is so imperfect, but their gentle imperfections are allowed to ricochet right off of each other's personalities, so it's okay.<p>

They watch movies on Fridays. They always have.

"Hurry up," she complains. He quickly exits the bathroom. She notices he's changed his shirt, and he's holding his wrist like he's in pain. She thinks nothing of it.

"Sorry." They kiss, and Jade ruffles up his perfectly fluffy hair before sitting down to watch the movie. Just like they would have four years ago. It's nice, having this juvenile, playful time with him again. Of course, it's not like they have anything else to do. No sex on Friday. It's a rule.

Like every other Friday for the past four years, Beck falls asleep halfway through the movie. It has occurred to her to let him pick the movie, but Beck has crappy taste in that stuff, so she never has. His arm is still around her shoulder and either it's really hot or his hand is sweating, because the back of her neck feels moist. She shrugs out from under him. His arm falls off her shoulder, and there's a weird sensation with the brush of his sleeve against her forearm. She looks down at her pale skin. A single red smear where his arm touched hers.

Curiosity wins her, and she flips his wrist over and there's blood. The skin is puckered and ridged under the red. Like razor cuts.

"Oh, no." she whispers under her breath, following the thin scars up his arms until they disappear into his rolled-up sleeves. She knows that if she checks the other arm it will look the same. Maybe his legs, too. She doesn't know when it started, or how, or why, but it sickens her to the point where she has to pause the movie to go gag over the toilet in the communal restroom in the park.

Once she's certain the nausea has passed, Jade moves to the mirror by the sinks and just stares at herself. Her hair is shiny. Her face is pretty and fresh, even under all the dark makeup. She's tall, slim, pretty hot. She's so much better than a trailer park. And an hour ago, she had thought Beck was too good for a trailer park, too. Now she's not so sure.

There's no other way. She has to dump him. She promises herself that she'll do it at the end of the month.

She misses her period a week later.

* * *

><p>Jade never thought she'd ever find herself sitting with her eyes closed in a dirty bathroom holding a pregnancy test under her ass, but look where she is now. The five minutes have already passed, but her eyelids are still pressed firmly together. She's scared to look. Every once in a while curiosity would get the better of her and she'd open her eyes a crack, and keeping her lashes feathered over the gap, would look down. Too blurry. So she shuts her eyes again and pockets the test, and forgets about it.<p>

When she finds it in her jacket later that night, it's very positive.

"Shit." she mutters to herself, the clogged up feeling in her throat making even that one syllable word fuzzy and unintelligible. Jade's having a very hard time breathing. Or thinking. Or doing anything except for cursing over and over again. "Fucking shit!" she shouts much too loudly, throwing the plastic atrocity to the floor and jumping up and down on top of it until it breaks into a million little pieces. Of course the guy she had every intention of dumping coldly on the ground would be the one to get her pregnant. Of course she'd be so lucky. Because if Jade knows anything, it's that she and luck have a very stable relationship.

As if.

She can't tell Beck, she knows that. He's too far gone. And even if the idea of having a baby with her is enough to make him fly straight for a while, she knows that eventually the pressure will get to him. And he'll snap. And the police will find him somewhere lying in his own blood with a vertical stripe down his arm. He's too smart to mess it up. Jade has no doubt that he is perfectly capable of offing himself if he so desires.

It's come to her attention very quickly that even if she wanted to tell someone, she couldn't. She has no friends. No family. No life outside of Beck and this parasite that's sucking her livelihood out of her like a leech. Jade curls up on the tile floor, pressing her body into the wall and letting her sides hug the room's sharp corner. She's not even sure what to think. There's a whole spectrum of rational emotions to choose from. She chooses the one that lies on the far end, off of her radar but certainly not too far from consideration.

Jade chooses hope.

* * *

><p>There's an abortion clinic down the street from the park, and she makes an appointment, fills in a bunch of mindless paperwork, and waits for almost a week. The waiting is the worst wait she's ever faced, because the symptoms are hard to hide- she's tired, nauseous in the mornings, eating way too much. In the back of her mind she wonders why anyone would want to get pregnant in the first place. It sucks.<p>

The day finally comes, and she's glad. She sneaks away while Beck is at the autobody shop, the substantial check already written. More waiting once she's at the clinic. The waiting room is a bit crowded. There is a girl who looks about fourteen sitting on the other side of the room, leaning on her boyfriend's shoulder and crying. There is a woman, fifty or so, reading a magazine and crying. There is a couple about Jade's age and they're both crying. Jade's the only one in the room with a dry eye. It's disturbing.

When her name is called she stands abruptly and almost runs to follow the nurse. It's been too long a wait, too much time spent around all these sad people. The actual procedure is over in less than an hour, and it hurts, yes, but it's a good hurt. Like a pinch on the arm once you wake from a nightmare.

She's supposed to be happy. That's the way she had planned it.

But Jade walks out of the clinic feeling hollow. There's a sadness that settles right onto her body as if it was already there and waiting, a sadness that doesn't make sense to her. She didn't want the baby. That's why she had given it up. There would be no mourning. No, she should be happy. Overjoyed. Relieved. She sort of is, but it's not strong enough.

She's so relieved that, ignoring all doctor's warnings, she goes to a bar.

She's so happy to be rid of it she gets herself blown out of her mind on little flavored shots and a solid amount of white wine.

She's so fucking overjoyed to have had her child ripped out of her body that she goes into a hotel room with an unknown girl and proceeds to shove her tongue as far down the mystery slut's throat as it can go, until she's gagging on the taste of stale alcohol and Stride gum.

Really, what's her other option?

* * *

><p><em>And to the left, the left of me, we got Exhibit B. Oh, she's a mess to say the least. She's got her daddy's money, money, money.<em>  
><em>Honey, I think you should run. I think you should run.<em>

If there's one thing Jade can't stand, it's easy sluts.

They're all over the place. As common as ants. They live in bars and sleazy nightclubs and try to seduce anyone with a head on their shoulders. Jade swore to herself from a very early age that she'd never become one, let alone go to bed with one. But as a girl with a cheap fake ID who's not even nineteen and who just got her first abortion, Jade's in no place to have morals. Or standards, for that matter.

So by default, Jade hates Tori. But really? Because after last night... Maybe it's the alcohol talking when she whispers those words into Tori's ear. She's drunk as fuck. Tori's worse, and it's obvious. They roll around in the silk sheets on Tori's rich-girl bed, pink and blue satin melting together and then discarded onto the plush floor.

The colors mix, pink blue clothes and purple sheets, pale white and tanned skin, black and brown hair. Red and cranberry lipstick. Nothing about them is the same. And when Jade pulls her party dress back on early the next morning, the dress that now sports a long tear up the side and quite a few lipstick stains, she can't help but think she's not the same that morning as she was last night.

Somehow the number of Tori's new expensive smartphone ends up on a sticky note in Jade's dress pocket.

* * *

><p>Jade moves all her stuff out of Beck's RV the next month. Almost two years of possessions and memories. More, if you count the times before she moved in. Six years? Sounds about right. What a waste of time.<p>

Beck cries as she packs her bags. Sometime in the few hours it takes she sees him sneak into the bathroom, and when he comes back out he's wearing long sleeves. Jade feels vomit rising in her throat and has to spit on the pavement before she can speak.

"That's why I'm leaving, you know." she tells him.

"What are you talking about?"

"The cutting." He's starting to panic, she can tell. His eyes are huge and searching for words. "You thought I didn't know?"

"I thought you didn't care." Beck says, looking down at the rubber toes of his Converse.

"Not care? Do you have any idea what it's like to live with that?" she practically screams. "You wanna know the real reason I'm leaving? I was pregnant. And I chose an abortion over a family with you because I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it. Because I knew you'd be happy at first, like always, but then at the first sign of any trouble you'd be hacking at yourself with a razor blade." Jade can see him bite on the inside of his lip. He doesn't like the way she said that. "And then, when the real trouble came up, you'd just-"

She lets the words fall off her tongue, and sees him fill in the gap by himself. His eyes begin to swim and he looks quickly away, ashamed to show this in front of her. "I would never."

"It's easy to say never from a safe place." Jade says with a shrug, packing the last hanger into a box. Beck's RV looks so much emptier without her already.

She's not even sad about it.

* * *

><p>After a few nights, Jade finds herself downing a travel-sized bottle of vodka and picking the numbers into the phone. She remembers hearing Tori's slurred voice over the line, giggling over the noise of thudding bass and party conversation.<p>

"Well, look who finally decided to acknowledge my existence. Sexy goth girl. What can I do for you." Jade can almost see her fuzzy, intoxicated grin.

"You free tonight?" Her own voice sounds choked, scratchy. She knows what she's doing is wrong. But she just can't help it.

"Damn right I'm free! This is America, hot stuff. I'm always free."

Jade wishes Tori wouldn't be so cocky, so cool about it. Doesn't she realize how wrong this is? Doesn't she care? "Where are you?" she mutters.

"The Glass Palace. Why don't you come on down and have a shot or two. See you in ten."

It's only when Jade arrives at the ultra-fancy nightclub that she realizes Tori's instructions to "see her in ten" were more of an order than an invitation.

"Hot stuff! Over here!" Tori calls to her when she steps into the darkened room. The Latina is wearing a silvery minidress with thin diamonds cut out of both sides, revealing inches of bare skin. Jade shuffles over, feeling increasingly frumpy and dull with every step. "What did you want to see me about?"

"Um, I just broke up with my boyfriend." she mumbles. Tori puts on a dramatic (and very fake) pout.

"Tragic." She hands Jade a tiny shotglass that probably cost about twenty bucks. "Let's get plastered and go up to my room and you can tell me all about it."

Jade doesn't know why this should make her feel any better, but strangely, it does. She remembers exploring every inch of that tanned skin later that night, and that Tori had been soft and beautiful.

But more than that, she remembers how disgusting she felt the next morning.

* * *

><p>It becomes very clear very quickly that Tori has a problem.<p>

The girl's only twenty-ish, yet the lines in her face read thirty. She's always drunk when Jade calls. Her penthouse apartment is full to the brim with half empty bottles of expensive liquor. Jade remembers their second date, when Tori whipped out her exclusive black AmEx and told the waitress to "charge it to Daddy, honey bun."

"You talk about your dad a lot." Jade comments one night, sober, sitting naked in Tori's bed and inspecting a feather from the down pillow that she had ripped open by accident.

"Yeah?" Tori, tipsy, rolls backwards and almost off the side of the mattress. The olive in her sloppily mixed martini bobs in the glass, threatening to topple out, along with the rest of the drink.

"Do I get to meet him?" They're not officially official, but Jade figures after that much sex, they might as well be dating.

"Can't. He's dead. Left all his money to me, though. This-" The infamous black AmEx, lifted high in the air- "This is Daddy. Say hello."

"Daddy" buys them daiquiris soon after, and they wind up back on top of each other, on the king sized bed in the suite.

While the sex is good and Jade does sort of like the feeling of being with a girl as opposed to Beck, She can't shake the feeling that Tori doesn't really care. You shouldn't have to be drunk to fuck. Yet as far as Jade can remember, Tori's been blown out her mind every single time.

It's all so meaningless.

* * *

><p>When Tori passes out on the plush sofa after far too much champagne, Jade begins her search for meaning.<p>

Leaving Tori out cold on the couch, Jade slips out the door and into the night. With shaking hands she removes the number from her contacts. Over the next few days, a dozen calls from an unknown number go ignored and unnoticed.

* * *

><p><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no. Six feet below the ground, where you avoid your problems.<em>

Jade gets sort of lost after she wanders out of Tori's house, and stumbles in a daze out of LA and all the way to New York. She remembers standing in JFK airport, looking back at the plane she just stepped off of, lucid for the first time since she walked out. How did I get here? No idea. But I'm never going back. She knows that for a fact.

With the three hundred dollars she found in Tori's coat pocket (who carries three hundred dollars in a coat, Tori?) and the pathetic sum left in her saving's account, Jade gets herself an apartment. Yes, she knows she'll be wearing the same dress until she can afford something from Salvation Army. Yes, she knows she'll have to get a job, and fast. Yes, she knows she's absolutely positively alone. And yes, she knows she needs to shape up.

What she really needs at the moment, though, is a drink.

There's a pretty bar downtown, with flashing nausea-inducing lights and loud alternative music. Jade puts on a new layer of thick black makeup and goes out, fixing the rip in the side of her blue dress with masking tape applied from the inside. It chafes against her side, but she doesn't really mind. Her heels are leftover from LA as well; she thinks they might be Tori's, actually, judging from the expensive-looking studs running up the heels.

She's very alone at the bar. Most people have dates. Jade's planning on leaving when there's a tap on her shoulder.

"New here?"

The voice belongs to a short skinny girl with Crayola-crayon-red hair and a pretty ice blue dress. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks are hollow, her dress sags on her tiny frame. She's beautiful. But Jade can't help but think that she'd be prettier after a few Big Macs.

"Yeah. Just in, actually." Jade says, choking back another drink. The liquor burns her throat. It feels amazing.

"Mm." She sways a little to the music, her red hair swinging around her shoulders. "Let's get a drink, then. It's on me."

The pretty redhead wanders over to the bar, her skirt swishing limply around her stick-skinny legs. Jade follows, wincing. Maybe the pain she feels for her is only imaginary, but it can't be comfortable to live with your bones that close to the surface. In a way, though, she envies her. The redhead didn't like her weight, and decided to change it. Jade couldn't do that if she tried.

The girl passes her a light-colored cocktail with a cherry floating in it. "Cheers. What'd you say your name was?"

"I didn't. Jade." She sips and the dainty-looking drink, trying not to gag at how sweet it is.

"Cat." It's fitting for a girl so small. Were her face fuller, she'd look about thirteen. "What's your story, Jade?"

Something snaps in her looking at those brown eyes.

It's like a tidal wave, the way the truth spills out and washes out the ground from under her. She tells Cat about her dad. About Beck, and the baby. About Tori. About coming here. Cat's eyes are huge when she finishes the story. Jade folds her hands underneath her thighs and waits for Cat to speak.

"So you were with a girl before you came to New York?"

Out of that entire story, that's what she picks up?

Jade nods feebly. Cat smirks at her. "Let's get outta here, then."

* * *

><p><em>Look right in front of me. We got Exhibit C- anorexic, obsessed with magazines.<em>

Cat is, honest to God, the best thing that's ever happened to her. But it's obvious she's even less okay than the rest of them.

She remembers the first time she goes on a dinner date with the girl, and how Cat got a salad and just picked at the leaves. She remembers later that night in the bedroom of her messy apartment, pulling the purple slip over her red hair to see the petite girl's bones all sticking out and it's horrible.

"Eat something, baby." Jade would coax in the quiet mornings after, holding out maybe a piece of cold pizza or wheat toast or a fresh green pear. And Cat would stare longingly for a few moments before shaking her head with a nervous smile. In the red-haired girl's mind, she's beaten it. She's reigning triumphant over her demons, the ones that dwell in the imaginary pockets of fat around her waist, and turning down nutrition is the right thing to do.

She remembers her first time going to Cat's apartment, how disturbing her first look into the redhead's mind is. Her illness is so obvious in her living quarters, Jade has to think of how much Cat must trust her, to bring her here. There are glossy magazine photos everywhere. The walls are papered with them, flapping in the window breeze. They are athletes. Celebrities. There are pictures of rail-thin models in bikinis tacked to all the walls, cabinets, covering the refrigerator. Worse than that is the smell of food rotting from the kitchen. "Why don't you just throw that away? That's gross," she remarks to Cat, who just shakes her head as if Jade can't possibly understand.

"It's part of my new diet plan. The smell stops me from going in the kitchen." Jade almost laughs. As if Cat needs a diet plan.

"You're not fat, Kitty."

Cat rolls her eyes. "You're supposed to say that."

Jade wants to respond that she's known Cat for two weeks, which is too short a time to have rules like that, but something tells her that she'd be speaking to a brick wall.

* * *

><p>"Why do you do that to yourself?" Jade does ask, a week or so later.<p>

"Do what?" They're sitting on the couch together, watching E!, not touching.

"Diet all the time."

"Oh." Cat fiddles with her hair nervously. "Well, I'm gonna keep doing it until it works, right? I wanna be a size five by this summer."

Jade swallows hard. Cat's a zero at most. "Cat. Kitty, look at me. I'm a size five." She slips her shirt over her head and hands it to the redheaded girl, who looks confused. "Put it on." Jade orders, and Cat, confused, pulls it on. Her breath comes faster as she pulls at the fabric that's almost too big to stay on her shoulders.

"You wanna know why I diet?" Cat says sharply, not looking up. "I do it because it feels good. It's distracting. Sometimes I just wanna get the razor back out. This way I have something else."

"You cut?" Jade asks, shocked. Cat pulls down her sock to expose her skeletal ankle, revealing even rows of completely healed-over scars.

"Used to." she murmurs, stroking her foot.

Tears spring to Jade's eyes, and Beck comes to mind, and she snaps. "Can't you see yourself, though? Look what you're doing! It's not okay, you're not okay! You need help, can't you see yourself?"

Cat stares at Jade for a moment, brown eyes locked with blue. "I can see myself just fine." she says. "But it's not the me I want."

* * *

><p>Cat agrees to change, however, and that's all Jade needs to give her the okay to buy the ring. Even when she was with Beck, she knew she'd be the one to propose. Maybe it was just her, but it seems like all the people she dates are completely commitment-phobic.<p>

The next night, when they go out to dinner, Cat eats most of Jade's mashed potatoes. Then afterwards she complains of chest pains. So Jade takes her back to her room, and lays her on the couch. As Jade is unzipping her dinner dress (the one from LA with the rip in the seam, it is her favorite dress, after all), Cat bolts up and says she's feeling fine. When Jade offers the bedroom, Cat shakes her head.

"Let's go somewhere… dangerous."

Jade brings Cat down to the basement of her apartment building, a dark, grungy room with a fuzzy TV and dirty couch that always smells like weed from the teenagers that smoke down there on weekends. "This is private?" Cat asks, nervous giggles.

"Completely." Jade assures her, slipping the strap of her dress off her shoulder.

"Oh. Good."

Cat's nerves settled, they set into their usual routine. Kisses all over and the gradual removal of clothing. Even through the flimsy fabric of the party dress, Jade can feel the sharp ridge of her hipbone against her leg. They only stop once, for Jade to run up to her apartment for a bottle of vodka and some olives. They mix messy, overly-alcoholic martinis, and keep going.

Even drunk, she can remember the night in perfect clarity.

She remembers slipping baggy fishnets off Cat's stick-thin legs, catching the waistband with her teeth and ripping downward until all of her beautiful cynical skin was exposed.

She remembers the rip in her old blue dress widening, tearing all the way to the hem.

She remembers how little interest Cat showed, how preoccupied she seemed.

She remembers mixing them another round drinks, martinis with two olives, and how Cat barely touched hers.

She remembers drops of their martinis spilling all over them, and she remembers licking the alcohol off Cat's stomach.

She remembers when Cat pretty much stopped interacting, but she pushed on.

She remembers the girl's final, desperate gasp, before she seized up and then went limp in Jade's arms, the faltering drumbeat of her heart thrashing in her chest and then coming to a complete halt all at once.

* * *

><p><em>And when I look over here, oh my God, that's me in the mirror. No, no, no, ladies and gentlemen, this is my fear- my eyes and ears.<em>  
><em>Honey, I think you should run, run.<em>

Cat's body is still lying in the basement when the police arrive. Jade doesn't have a tear to shed. No, her eyes are rolling in their sockets and she's talking to herself like a madwoman in her shiny dress. "I didn't kill her" is the first thing she says when they see her sitting in the corner, gray ashes from the dirty cellar floor all rubbed into her skin.

"We know," they say, and haul her to her feet. She doesn't believe it for a second. There is an accusation lying dormant behind the gentle tones of each and every one, an accusation ready to latch itself to her at any evidence of her guilt.

She doesn't remember what happened before the cops got here. Her arms are full of shards of glass, so obviously something broke. But what? The martini glasses, perhaps.

They bring her outside without even looking twice at her bloody arms. She can hear traffic, noise, but she can't see anything. The night is closing in on her, a suffocating sheet of black sky. No stars.

She needs to get away.

And then she's standing in the grungy bathroom, looking at her face in the dust-speckled mirror. She can just see herself through the grime, the soft curves of her hair piled on her shoulders, the party dress with the broken seam, the ash-stained pallor of her cheeks and arms. But there are other parts of her that scream with the voices of the ghosts from her past. Her father's hard hand manifests itself in a mysterious bruise on her upper arm. The way the broken shards of martini glass have lodged themselves into her skin shouts of Beck. The thick makeup smeared down both her cheeks and the glittery-hard way she is holding herself is all Tori. And she looks at her waist which has always been much too wide and immediately thinks of Cat, that that's what she would have said and now she's dead.

Jade falls back onto one of the toilet seats and cries for all of them, all the ghosts of her past. Her dad. She's sorry she left. For Beck, if he's not dead he's probably tried several times, most of which were probably done over tears for her. For the baby she never knew yet always wanted, and still so heartlessly destroyed. Tori, wherever she is. Liver failure, perhaps, or passed out in a bar bathroom, or giving some streetwhore the full tour of her silk sheets. Cat, who died so young without even believing she was beautiful. And herself, for thinking that she deserved even the littlest bit of pity.

She cries for what feels like an hour, and probably looks it, too, with her red eyes and swollen cheeks. It doesn't seem like long enough. She pulls every last filament of glass out of her forearm, wiggling each one as she does until her arm is screaming and completely red with blood. The pain wrangles a cry from her throat, but no tears. Perhaps she's run out. Or just grown too tough for them.

* * *

><p>Jade emerges into the night, cold air biting at her bloody bare arms. She has nowhere to go as she walks out the door of her apartment building, and nothing to take with her, all her few possessions are in the room she left.<p>

"I'm leaving now." Jade says, stumbling down the sidewalk in her studded slingbacks. The apartment building smells like guilt. She can't face the truth of what she's done. Even though she doesn't quite know what that is.

"Wait, miss, I have to ask you a few questions about Ms. Valentine." His voice is kind, but still there's the underlying accusation that she just knows is there, and she can't take it anymore. Tears she thought she didn't have began to spill over her already swollen cheeks, stinging the skin where she's rubbed her face raw. She needs to leave, needs to go far away, needs to take the next turn in the fucked-up game of hide-and-seek she plays, the part where she hides and eventually her past comes and finds her.

She takes one look at the cop and shakes her head. Hooking the shining shoes around her fingers, she steps onto the pavement in her bare feet, discarded glass from broken bottles stabbing into her toes. With one fluid motion, Jade whips her heels into the azalea bushes and sprints away without looking back.

* * *

><p><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no. Six feet below the ground, where you avoid your problems.<em>  
><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no. Six feet below the ground, where you will never solve them.<em>

Somewhere along the line of being lost and running she dabbles in drugs. Just for a little bit, but for long enough to fry her brain so that she has no idea which end is up. She likes to try things out, a connoisseur of fresh experiences, and each brain-warping drug she inhales, injects, or ingests is a new one. Like a rare butterfly or a Pokémon. Gotta catch 'em all.

With each drug comes a new Jade, a new life. She likes playing the roulette like this, selecting a different identity for each city she drifts to, a small ball skipping over places and numbers, landing wherever she can.

Speed has her in Portland, in the basement of a long-forgotten "friend". Cocaine leads her to Albany, just a bit of meth and she's in Providence, in a broken down barn with a guy she doesn't know. Weed brings her down farther south, to Virginia. Then she's back in Pennsylvania with tabs of E in a nightclub, music turns colors in front of her eyes. She's back huffing glue in Connecticut within a few days. And then goes to Boston, where she slips a needle into her skin for the first time, achieving a glorious heroin low that makes her want to fall asleep.

She passes out on the public library steps. Several hours later, she feels something poking at her side. She tries to open her eyes but the light is blinding, and it hurts. So she fights back in blindness as something jabs in under her side, lifting her up off the granite stair. It's people, she's pretty sure of it.

"No," she moans as they haul her to her feet. "Where are you taking me?"

She can't really hear their answer, but the last word sounds like "home", and that's good enough for her.

* * *

><p><em>I know you don't wanna hear this, but just listen.<em>  
><em>The last contendent. Bad for us, bad for you. This capillary root could root up all the little puzzle pieces of what you've been through.<em>

There's a man about her age, twenty-three she thinks might be right, in the Home with her. Andre, his name is. Maybe. She hasn't really bothered getting to know any of the other psychos. After all, this situation is going to be very temporary.

She doesn't really have an option, though. He has personality.

"What's your name, pretty?" he asks one night at dinner.

"Jade." she says, growls a bit, short, simple.

"What are you in here for?" He's drumming his fingers on the table in front of her. "Drugs, I'll bet. Or mental illness."

"If that's what you think, you can fuck off." She stabs the potato on her plate violently (it's overcooked, anyways, gray and smelling of plastic, she wasn't going to eat it) until the table shudders.

"Not one for conversation, are you?" The look on his face bugs her. He's not offended. He looks a bit bemused.

"Listen, bitch, I've been homeless since I was eighteen. My dad used to beat me _like a fucking animal_. I watched my girlfriend die and-" She stops. She's said too much, she can tell. His eyes are wide as dinner plates and he's watching her intensely. Jade's heart begins to thrash against her ribs, her breath turns to jelly in her lungs. "Just leave me alone, okay?" she chokes out, knocking over the chair as she gets up hurriedly.

She runs to her room. Anywhere to escape the walls of the cage that are threatening to shut around her. Still, even when she lays back on her mattress and tries to calm down, she feels the rope around her ankles dragging her back. Literally feels it. It's as if someone has tied her legs together and when she looks down she can see the thin cords binding her feet, her knees, her hands. She can feel the rag in her mouth and spits at it, thrashing back against the bed. She tries to scream. People begin to gather in her doorway, watching her fight her bonds. "Don't just stand there, do something!" she screams, but no one listens. The gag has muffled her words.

Struggling to her feet, Jade throws herself against the walls, the desk, the table in the corner. Anything to loosen the deathly grip of the cords around her! If only she had her scissors… she could cut the ropes, she could be free…

A nurse comes running towards her with something long and shiny.

Finally! Jade wants to cry with relief. The nurse has a knife or something to cut her bonds. "Hold still," the nurse says to her. Yes! Yes! Rescue me! But she doesn't touch the ropes. She takes the shiny object, which Jade recognizes just in time, and jabs it into Jade's arm.

Jade's eyes go wide and the room goes white, before blurring out of sight.

* * *

><p>"What happened?" she moans. Her arms and legs feel stiff. Jade can't move.<p>

"You had a panic attack. Don't worry. It happens." Andre's sitting next to her bed, smiling down at her. And that's when she realizes that she's been strapped down to the mattress.

"They tied me up?" she hisses, fury flashing in her eyes.

"Here." Andre unlocked one belt at a time until she can sit up. "You were still thrashing around after they sedated you. They had to do something."

"Thanks." Jade rubs at her skin where she can feel bruises blooming. A lot of trouble for a few imaginary ropes, she thinks.

"Why were you doing that, anyways?" he asks. She just shakes her head. "You wanna talk about it? It'll help, I think. Talking about my issues helped for me, at first."

"I don't have issues. I'm fine." she says, staring at a scratch in the wall.

Andre shakes his head. "Look around, Jade. You're in a Home. You're a drug addict and you have some mental condition they don't even have a name for yet. You're not okay. It's clear as daylight."

"Shut up, please." Jade growls through her teeth. "My past is none of your business. It's done. I'm over it. We're not talking about this again." She gets up to quickly leave, who cares if she's still supposed to be strapped to a bed, but stops at the sound of his voice.

"I think you're scared, Jade." The words have the freezing power of ice, stopping her dead in her tracks. "I think you think you're some kind of fucked-up puzzle with a billion missing pieces that no one can solve, and I'm not saying that's not the case." The voice behind her gets louder, and she just stands frozen, breath coming in fast gasps. "But somewhere inside you, there's the truth about you, Jade, and I think you're scared to find it." His voice is right behind her, directly behind her shoulder.

"I'm not scared of anything." she says calmly, and turns around so they're face to face. His eyes are so safe and nonjudgmental.

"Really?" It's a whisper now. It's beautiful.

"Really." She links her fingers with Andre, pressing her hand into the curve of his, letting her head arch upwards so their lips just touch.

* * *

><p><em>Your hair all up in knots. Don't ever say you're not "Oh, just a nothing"<em>  
><em>'Cause I swear downstairs you're something that's egotistic, cynical. I'm getting out of control, out of control, out of control.<em>

Jade is discharged after two months, thrown onto the sidewalk in the dirty clothes she came in with, with the blue dress and a big bottle of pills. She throws away the pills almost immediately. After all, drugs are drugs, and she kind of likes the clean way she feels.

She buys herself a new life in a new job. She's amazed to find her bank account full. When she goes to the bank, they tell her that her grandmother died last month. She was wired a huge amount of money, which the lawyers were originally going to withhold, seeing as she was in rehab. Her father took care of it, making sure she got what she was granted.

This brings tears to Jade's eyes, and the banker smiles, handing her a tissue.

So the first thing she does is buy herself a new house right near Beacon Hill. It's pretty and brick and there are window boxes and it's so very expensive. But she can afford it now. She's had too long of living in the cheapest, crappiest apartment around. It's a good feeling to water the window flowers and buy fun furniture at Ikea and stock her walk-in closet with new clothes. She throws the ripped blue dress in the trash. It contains too many dirty memories for this clean space.

When the garbage man comes, Jade watches him out the window, loading the clear plastic bag with the blue dress in it into the back of the truck. She catches one final glimpse of the blue silk as it disappears into the jaws of the beast. Satisfied, she turns away from the window.

* * *

><p>She's walking back through the Beacon Hill district with shopping bags full of groceries when she sees him again for the first time. She's bought bags and bags of lettuces and greens, everything she missed in her ages of drifting. McDonald's food is only okay in small doses, and hospital food sucks from the start. So she's recently become obsessed with vegetables.<p>

As she's walking towards her house, her professional patent leather heels clicking sharply against the ground, she almost steps on him. There's a homeless man in the alley next to her apartment. And he looks familiar.

"Andre?" she murmurs, setting her groceries down and rousing him. He stirs, lifting his head off the pavement.

"Jade?" He's blinking fast, like she's a mirage. Or an angel. Or his salvation.

"What are you doing out here?" It's not an accusation, no, her voice is surprisingly tender. She cares about this guy sleeping in the gutter outside her house. Andre just shakes his head.

"Sometimes things don't work out, that's all."

"I have a place. You can come live with me. There's plenty of room."

The fire of hope she's just lit in Andre is apparent by the spark in his eye, and she can feel it cauterizing some of the bleeding in her heart. She smiles. "Come on. You can help me put some of this stuff away."

* * *

><p>He's not so bad once he's showered and his clothes are washed. Actually, he's kind of handsome. She lends him a razor and lets him use her shampoo, which leaves him smelling like citrus.<p>

"You'll have to sleep on the couch until we can get you a bed or something. It pulls out."

"You don't have to do this." he tells her. She ignores him.

"Here, I can put these on this hanger. You can have this closet space, too, once we go shopping." She knows she doesn't have to do this. As a teenager, she wouldn't have. But she's an adult now, and she sort of misses having someone to come home to.

* * *

><p>She likes him. She wants those hospital kisses again.<p>

"Who are we kidding with this platonic roommate stuff?" Jade whispers to her newspaper. She's sitting on the couch, dressed for Sunday.

"You say something?" He's making eggs for breakfast. Having him around is like having a personal cook, cleaner, assistant. It's nice and leaves her more time to focus on her work.

"Just musing." she says.

"About?" He comes over, sits on the couch by her feet.

"What's different between here and the hospital?" Jade pulls her legs up to her chest and stares at him. "The way we were in there, I mean."

"You want that?" he asks. He looks excited, though, and that makes her feel better. "There's no difference, really, it's just- you've changed, Jade. You're not a mess anymore. Excuse me for feeling intimidated."

Jade smirks, kicking off her flats. "Come here." she growls in Andre's ear, pulling him in towards her.

Sparks fly for the first time in her life when their lips meet. Tori's lips felt like a dead coal in comparison. Beck and Cat's felt like a sparkler. This feels like a firework and an open flame at the same time. She's found her match.

"That was something." Andre says when they pull apart.

"That was so much better than something." Jade's mind is flying backward to her years of wandering and closes her eyes, inhaling the moment in his scent in the air. "That was everything I've been searching for."

"You were searching for me?"

"In a way, I think I was."

"Oh." The silence is tangible. And he repeats the words he's said so long ago in the hospital: "You wanna talk about it?"

Jade pauses. She's spent her entire life dodging this question. But she's not even that Jade anymore. Old memories in a new entity. "It's a long story."

"I've got time."

She's ready.

Jade takes a deep breath, and begins.

* * *

><p><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no. Six feet below the ground, where you avoid your problems.<em>  
><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no. Six feet below the ground, where you will never solve them.<em>  
><em>Look, oh, look around. You're lost but never found, no! Six feet below the ground, where you avoid your problems!<em>  
><em>Out of control. I've got control!<em>


End file.
